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thing that could move through the humidity were mosquitoes. But this desert was how he imagined the landscape of Hell must be. Nothing out here was friendly, nothing offered either comfort or ease, and everything seemed to want to kill everything else. They passed a tarantula locked in mortal combat with a scorpion, and perched above them on a rock was a horned lizard waiting to eat the winner.
    The pace was monotonous, and after a while Grey drifted into a doze. But his dreams were haunted and strange.
    In those dreams he walked naked across this desert, and no matter how many days or weeks passed, the horizon never got any closer. When he paused to weep or pick at the sun blisters on his skin, he’d hear a sound and turn to see a whole company of ghosts following behind. They were all broken and dismembered. Fresh wounds gaped on their skin and they left behind them a trail of bloody footprints that vanished into the far, far distance.
    These were the same ghosts that had followed him for years, but now their company had grown. Riley Jones and Big Curley led the grotesque parade. Their eyes were as black as polished coal; their reaching hands as pale and mottled as mushrooms.
    â€œGrey…,” they murmured. All of them, a chorus of spectral voices that sounded almost like empty wind drifting across the hot sands. “Grey … come with us. Come join us.”
    â€œNo!” screamed his dreaming self. “You’re dead. You can’t be here.”
    â€œCome with us,” they cried. “Stop running. You can stop running now. It’s peaceful here. It’s quiet and cool. You don’t need to be afraid.”
    The words were meant to soothe, to lull, but they were spoken by shattered mouths filled with jagged stumps of teeth. Pale tongues writhed like fat worms in those mouths, and it all conspired to tell the lie behind the soft words.
    â€œNo,” said Grey again, but each time he said it the power in his voice faded, faded …
    They kept calling him.
    â€œYou’re not real!” he whispered. “You’re dead. For God’s sake stop following me. I’m sorry. God knows, I’m sorry. Leave me alone.”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œFor the love of God, leave me in peace!”
    Their voices faded as his panic pushed him up through the waters of sleep. As he broke the surface and came awake with a start, he could hear the last echoes of their ghostly chorus.
    â€œThere is no peace,” they said. “Not for you. Never for you…”

 
    Chapter Thirteen
    Looks Away snapped awake and cut a suspicious glance at Grey.
    â€œDid you say something?”
    Their horses were still moving forward with the implacable plodding gait that kept them all from dying, out in the relentless sun. Both men had slept.
    Grey cleared his throat. “No. I was just studying the terrain.”
    â€œStudying the terrain,” echoed Looks Away. “With your eyes closed?”
    â€œHow would you know? You’ve been snoring for the last three miles.”
    â€œSioux never fall asleep in the saddle,” said Looks Away, offended. “I was contemplating our problem and formulating various plans.”
    â€œSure,” said Grey. “While snoring.”
    â€œHaven’t you ever heard of Zen meditation? That was a mantra.”
    â€œI don’t know what that is, but it sounded like snoring.”
    â€œYou,” said Looks Away, “are welcome to kiss my ass.”
    â€œAnd you are welcome to—.”
    Grey stopped and suddenly stood up in the stirrups.
    â€œWhat—?” began Looks Away, but then he turned as well.
    They both squinted into the distance. There, so far away that it was nearly invisible in the heat shimmer, was something that glittered. Sparks of sunlight flew out from it like they would from fragments of a broken mirror, except these were above the ground.
    â€œWhat is that?” murmured Looks